Why is it so much fun to read Medieval travel stories that we know are at least partly untrue?

Jehan de Mandeville claims to have traveled around much of the known (and unknown) world of his time. Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, India, China – you name the place, and he almost surely..

Are these travel memoirs worth reading, or have they been flawed by political circumstances?

This book is a collection of essays and stories from Ji Xianlin’s years in Germany, his visits in India, Japan and Taiwan, and his life in China. I found his style of writing a bit weird at first: here was an outstanding scientist, an intellectual, who seemed to be continuously talking about..

Did conservative ethics turn this great adventure story into such a slow read?

Abu Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Battuta is only a very young man when he embarks on his hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. But he doesn’t stop there. Instead he goes on and on and on, and several travels during the next three decades will take him almost everywhere in..

This author has been called the „grandfather of travel writing“ – but is he really that good?

At first I really liked this book. RH reminded me of Patrick Leigh Fermor, who set out as a young man to see the world and find adventure. And RH seemed even more extreme in the way was willing to embrace hardship, sometimes apparently looking for disaster. I appreciated that, and I still do..

Is it a good thing or a bad thing when travel writers start to write about writing?

Helge Timmerberg is a German travel writer in his fifties who ventures into India to follow the flow of the Ganges river. He takes trains and cabs into the mountain area around the source, smokes some weed, stops..

Do photos, a lot of countries and a slick design make for a good book?

It is the turn of the first decade of the 21st century, and Fabian Sixtus Körner is a young designer from Germany who wants to see the world. He hears of the German tradition of the „journeyman years“, where young men, after completing their apprenticeship in the crafts, set out to roam about the country and learn from other masters. A sort of medieval „work & travel“ if you will, a tradition that is still..

NH is a woman in her twenties from Switzerland who is struggling with mental health issues, most notably an eating disorder. She decides to embark on a backpacking trip through Asia. She travels on her own for a while, then she runs into a British traveler, marries him, and they continue to go on..

If this guy writes so well and goes to so many cool places, then just why is this book he wrote so bad?

Xiao Peng is a young Chinese white-collar worker who decides that he wants to see the world. He first travels around China, then ends up as an exchange student in the Netherlands. From there, he sets out to..

About Me

Hey guys, I'm Chris from The Longest Way - A Walk Through China. I like to take walks sometimes, and I enjoy reading travel books!

This is BookSlap

I think it is interesting how many literary works have a journey at the core of their story.

The Homerian epics revolve around journeys, Tolkien's "Lord Of The Rings" is a journey in itself, and whenever anyone writes anything about any place in the world, the author is always inviting the reader to go on a journey with him.

This is why I chose to include fictious classics like Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe" and non-fiction works like Kissinger's "On China" in this blog.